front cover of Accounting for Slavery
Accounting for Slavery
Masters and Management
Caitlin Rosenthal
Harvard University Press, 2018

A Five Books Best Economics Book of the Year
A Politico Great Weekend Read


“Absolutely compelling.”
—Diane Coyle

“The evolution of modern management is usually associated with good old-fashioned intelligence and ingenuity…But capitalism is not just about the free market; it was also built on the backs of slaves.”
Forbes

The story of modern management generally looks to the factories of England and New England for its genesis. But after scouring through old accounting books, Caitlin Rosenthal discovered that Southern planter-capitalists practiced an early form of scientific management. They took meticulous notes, carefully recording daily profits and productivity, and subjected their slaves to experiments and incentive strategies comprised of rewards and brutal punishment. Challenging the traditional depiction of slavery as a barrier to innovation, Accounting for Slavery shows how elite planters turned their power over enslaved people into a productivity advantage. The result is a groundbreaking investigation of business practices in Southern and West Indian plantations and an essential contribution to our understanding of slavery’s relationship with capitalism.

“Slavery in the United States was a business. A morally reprehensible—and very profitable business…Rosenthal argues that slaveholders…were using advanced management and accounting techniques long before their northern counterparts. Techniques that are still used by businesses today.”
Marketplace

“Rosenthal pored over hundreds of account books from U.S. and West Indian plantations…She found that their owners employed advanced accounting and management tools, including depreciation and standardized efficiency metrics.”
Harvard Business Review

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Brazil and South Korea
Economic Crisis and Restructuring
Edited by Edmund Amann and Ha-Joon Chang
University of London Press, 2003

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Casino Accounting and Financial Management
Second Edition
E. Malcolm Greenlees
University of Nevada Press, 2008
In this work, author E. Malcolm Greenlees provides detailed information about the role of state governments in the regulation of gaming. He also discusses the dominance of slot machines as the major revenue source in most casinos; he provides information about changes in the types and operation of slot machines, as well as accounting procedures for slot revenues.
The book covers every aspect of the financial management of a casino, from the details of licensing and regulation to revenue taxation; the management of slot machines and other gaming devices, table games, and betting operations; revenue flows and internal cash controls; cashiering; accounting; and financial reporting.
Casino Accounting and Financial Management has been recognized as the essential manual for gaming industry professionals since its first publication in 1988. This 2008 edition is updated throughout and greatly expands the original text, addressing growth and changes in the casino industry as gaming has spread into new venues both nationwide and internationally, incorporated new games and new technology, and become subject to new management policies and new government regulations.
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Comparative National Balance Sheets
A Study of Twenty Countries, 1688-1979
Raymond W. Goldsmith
University of Chicago Press, 1985
Raymond W. Goldsmith has combined his experience, good sense, and flair with figures to construct this groundbreaking comparative study of the balance sheets of twenty of the largest nations. A pioneer in the field of national accounts, Goldsmith now presents a work that will be a valuable tool in tracking the economic progress of and between nations.

The majority of the balance sheets were created especially for this project, their components gleaned from fragmentary and heterogeneous data. There are approximately 3,500 entries, each measuring the value of one type of tangible or financial asset or liability at a given date. Goldsmith's estimates are keyed to fifteen benchmark dates in the economic progress of the cited nations, and for twelve nations he was able to construct balance sheets dating back to the nineteenth century or earlier. Combined, worldwide balance sheet are included for 1950 and 1978.

Comparative National Balance Sheets will provide an essential basis for the quantitative analysis of the long-term financial development of these nations. In addition to national balance sheets for all large countries except Brazil and China, sectoral balance sheets for France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Japan, and the United States in the postwar period are also included.
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Debt to Society
Accounting for Life under Capitalism
Miranda Joseph
University of Minnesota Press, 2014

It is commonplace to say that criminals pay their debt to society by spending time in prison, but what is a “debt to society”? How is crime understood as a debt? How has time become the equivalent for crime? And how does criminal debt relate to the kind of debt held by consumers and university students?

In Debt to Society, Miranda Joseph explores modes of accounting as they are used to create, sustain, or transform social relations. Envisioning accounting broadly to include financial accounting, managerial accounting of costs and performance, and the calculation of “debts to society” owed by criminals, Joseph argues that accounting technologies have a powerful effect on social dynamics by attributing credits and debts. From sovereign bonds and securitized credit card debt to student debt and mortgages, there is no doubt that debt and accounting structure our lives.

Exploring central components of neoliberalism (and neoliberalism in crisis) from incarceration to personal finance and university management, Debt to Society exposes the uneven distribution of accountability within our society. Joseph demonstrates how ubiquitous the forces of accounting have become in shaping all aspects of our lives, proposing that we appropriate accounting and offer alternative accounts to turn the present toward a more widely shared well-being.

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Document Raj
Writing and Scribes in Early Colonial South India
Bhavani Raman
University of Chicago Press, 2012
Historians of British colonial rule in India have noted both the place of military might and the imposition of new cultural categories in the making of Empire, but Bhavani Raman, in Document Raj, uncovers a lesser-known story of power: the power of bureaucracy. Drawing on extensive archival research in the files of the East India Company’s administrative offices in Madras, she tells the story of a bureaucracy gone awry in a fever of documentation practices that grew ever more abstract—and the power, both economic and cultural, this created.
 
In order to assert its legitimacy and value within the British Empire, the East India Company was diligent about record keeping. Raman shows, however, that the sheer volume of their document production allowed colonial managers to subtly but substantively manipulate records for their own ends, increasingly drawing the real and the recorded further apart. While this administrative sleight of hand increased the company’s reach and power within the Empire, it also bolstered profoundly new orientations to language, writing, memory, and pedagogy for the officers and Indian subordinates involved. Immersed in a subterranean world of delinquent scribes, translators, village accountants, and entrepreneurial fixers, Document Raj maps the shifting boundaries of the legible and illegible, the legal and illegitimate, that would usher India into the modern world.
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Financial Management for Libraries
William W. Sannwald
American Library Association, 2018

Presenting financial management principles and best practices applicable to both public and academic libraries, this comprehensive text elucidates a broad array of issues crucial for those entering a managerial position. Both thorough and straightforward, Sannwald's treatment

  • gives readers a solid grounding in the basics of accounting and finance, with an emphasis on applicability to library management and operations;
  • ties budgets and strategic planning to library vision, mission, goals, and objectives;
  • discusses the roles of stakeholders such as boards, governmental/municipal bodies, the university, and the community;
  • looks at a variety of funding sources, from tax revenue to gifts and donations, and presents sound strategies for including them when projecting income and expenses;
  • articulates and discusses the pros and cons of various budget strategies;
  • includes sample budgets and forms that can be customized as needed;
  • offers expert guidance on modifying budgets for windfalls and shortfalls;
  • explains operating ratios, fiscal benchmarking, and metrics, demonstrating how to use these to effectively create and manage a budget and assess the fiscal health of the library; and
  • advises on how to effectively prepare and present a budget and annual financial statements to a library's governing agency.
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Fiscal Aspects of Aviation Management
Robert W. Kaps
Southern Illinois University Press, 2000

Although introductions to courses in finance exist for a variety of fields, Robert W. Kaps provides the first text to address the subject from an aviation viewpoint. Relying on his vast experience—twenty-plus years in the airline industry and more than thirty years in aviation—Kaps seeks not only to prepare students for careers in the aviation field but also to evoke in these students an excitement about the business. Specifically, he shows students how airlines, airports, and aviation are financed. Each chapter contains examples and illustrations and ends with suggested readings and references.

Following his discussion of financial management and accounting procedures, Kaps turns to financial management and sources of financial information. Here he discusses types of business organizations, corporate goals, business ethics, maximizing share price, and sources of financial information.

Kaps also covers debt markets, financial statements, air transport sector revenue generation, and air transport operating cost management, including cost administration and labor costs, fuel, and landing fees and rentals. He describes in depth air transport yield management systems and airport financing, including revenues, ownership, operations, revenue generation, funding, allocation of Air Improvement Program funds, bonds, and passenger facility charges.

Kaps concludes with a discussion of the preparation of a business plan, which includes advice about starting and running a business. He also provides two typical business plan outlines. While the elements of fiscal management in aviation follow generally accepted accounting principles, many nuances are germane only to the airline industry. Kaps provides a basic understanding of the principles that are applicable throughout the airline industry.

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Forensic Accounting and Fraud Examination
Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities
Richard Dull
MOOC Books, 2015

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Generational Accounting around the World
Edited by Alan J. Auerbach, Laurence J. Kotlikoff, and Willi Leibfritz
University of Chicago Press, 1999
The realities of mounting government debt, tax burdens, and an aging population raise serious concerns about the financial legacy confronting future generations. How great a fiscal burden will current policies leave to subsequent generations, and how might changes in those policies alter the intergenerational distribution of public welfare? Generational accounting has recently emerged as a robust new method of fiscal analysis and planning designed to assess the long-term sustainability of fiscal policy and to measure the extent of the financial load ultimately borne by present and future generations. A seminal contribution to public economics, generational accounting has already been adopted by 23 nations around the world.

Combining the latest and most extensive country-by-country generational analyses with a comprehensive review of generational accounting's innovative methodology, these papers are a consummate resource for economists, political scientists, and policy makers concerned with fiscal health and responsibility.

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Geography and Ownership as Bases for Economic Accounting
Edited by Robert E. Baldwin, Robert E. Lipsey, and J. David Richardson
University of Chicago Press, 1998
Geography and Ownership as Bases for Economic Accounting provides a forum for leading specialists in trade and international economics to explore whether changes in the world economy have increased the usefulness of international accounts drawn up on the basis of ownership rather than on geography. The papers in this volume suggest that ownership-based national accounts are helpful in understanding trade and financial transactions among globalized enterprises. Individual chapters emphasize this perspective through accounting exercises, studies of individual countries, and studies of foreign direct investment and its relation to national economies.

This volume gives trade and international economists the data and resources to renew discussion of this timely issue.



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A History of Accountancy in the United States
The Cultural Significance of Accounting. Revised Edition.
GARY JOHN PREVITS
The Ohio State University Press, 1998

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Income, Wealth, and the Maximum Principle
Martin L. Weitzman
Harvard University Press, 2003

This compact and original exposition of optimal control theory and applications is designed for graduate and advanced undergraduate students in economics. It presents a new elementary yet rigorous proof of the maximum principle and a new way of applying the principle that will enable students to solve any one-dimensional problem routinely. Its unified framework illuminates many famous economic examples and models.

This work also emphasizes the connection between optimal control theory and the classical themes of capital theory. It offers a fresh approach to fundamental questions such as: What is income? How should it be measured? What is its relation to wealth?

The book will be valuable to students who want to formulate and solve dynamic allocation problems. It will also be of interest to any economist who wants to understand results of the latest research on the relationship between comprehensive income accounting and wealth or welfare.

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Inspectors-General
Junkyard Dogs or Man's Best Friend?
Mark Moore
Russell Sage Foundation, 1986
In 1978, determined to combat fraud, waste, and abuse in government programs, Congress overwhelmingly approved the creation of special Offices of Inspectors-General (OIGs) in many federal departments. Moore and Gates here provide the first evaluation of this important institutional innovation. Clearly and objectively, they examine the powerful but often imprecisely defined concepts—wastefulness, accountability, performance—that underlie the OIG mandate. Their study conveys a realistic sense of how these offices operate and how their impact is affected by the changing dynamics of politics and personality. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation's Social Science Perspectives Series
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Narrative Threads
Accounting and Recounting in Andean Khipu
Edited by Jeffrey Quilter and Gary Urton
University of Texas Press, 2002

The Inka Empire stretched over much of the length and breadth of the South American Andes, encompassed elaborately planned cities linked by a complex network of roads and messengers, and created astonishing works of architecture and artistry and a compelling mythology—all without the aid of a graphic writing system. Instead, the Inkas' records consisted of devices made of knotted and dyed strings—called khipu—on which they recorded information pertaining to the organization and history of their empire. Despite more than a century of research on these remarkable devices, the khipu remain largely undeciphered.

In this benchmark book, twelve international scholars tackle the most vexed question in khipu studies: how did the Inkas record and transmit narrative records by means of knotted strings? The authors approach the problem from a variety of angles. Several essays mine Spanish colonial sources for details about the kinds of narrative encoded in the khipu. Others look at the uses to which khipu were put before and after the Conquest, as well as their current use in some contemporary Andean communities. Still others analyze the formal characteristics of khipu and seek to explain how they encode various kinds of numerical and narrative data.

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National Accounts and Environmentally Sustainable National Income
Roefie Hueting and Bart de Boer
Eburon Academic Publishers, 2019
Our planet is threatened by a mistaken confidence in erroneously calculated growth. The term “economic growth” can only mean an increase in human welfare, but it is often wrongly identified with production growth that may in fact be destructive to the environment. Thus, while the measures of standard National Income (NI) or Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are useful for many purposes, they are inadequate in guiding environmental policy making. This book develops the corrective concept of an environmentally Sustainable National Income (eSNI). eSNI is defined as the maximally attainable level of production, using the technology of the year under review, whereby the vital environmental functions (possible uses) of the not-human-made physical surroundings remain available for future generations. In order to accurately judge environmental sustainability, the authors show, NI and eSNI must be addressed jointly. Drawing on data from the Netherlands from 1990 to 2015, the authors demonstrate the effectiveness of eSNI and argue that national statistical bureaus around the world should provide this measure to their own policymakers, so that policymaking across the globe might be informed by sound information about both national economies and the global environment.
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The National Balance Sheet of the United States, 1953-1980
Raymond W. Goldsmith
University of Chicago Press, 1982
In what constitutes a landmark in the field of national accounts, Raymond W. Goldsmith gives detailed estimates of the nation's assets and liabilities year by year from 1953 through 1975 and for the benchmark years of 1900, 1929, and 1980. Special features of this work include presentation of data sector by sector, which casts light on the changing roles of financial institutions, and Goldsmith's expression of data in the form of ratios rather than in absolute dollar values, a device that makes the material both more informative and easier to absorb.

The most comprehensive and extensive study of national wealth ever attempted, The National Balance Sheet will be a rich resource for researchers and users of national accounts.
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A New Architecture for the U.S. National Accounts
Edited by Dale W. Jorgenson, J. Steven Landefeld, and William D. Nordhaus
University of Chicago Press, 2006
A New Architecture for the U.S. National Accounts brings together a distinguished group of contributors to initiate the development of a comprehensive and fully integrated set of United States national accounts. The purpose of the new architecture is not only to integrate the existing systems of accounts, but also to identify gaps and inconsistencies and expand and incorporate systems of nonmarket accounts with the core system. 

Since the United States economy accounts for almost thirty percent of the world economy, it is not surprising that accounting for this huge and diverse set of economic activities requires a decentralized statistical system. This volume outlines the major assignments among institutions that include the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Department of Labor, the Census Bureau, and the Governors of the Federal Reserve System. 

An important part of the motivation for the new architecture is to integrate the different components and make them consistent. This volume is the first step toward achieving that goal.
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Political Arithmetic
Simon Kuznets and the Empirical Tradition in Economics
Robert William Fogel, Enid M. Fogel, Mark Guglielmo, and Nathaniel Grotte
University of Chicago Press, 2013
We take for granted today that the assessments, measurements, and forecasts of economists are crucial to the decision-making of governments and businesses alike. But less than a century ago that wasn’t the case—economists simply didn’t have the necessary information or statistical tools to understand the ever more complicated modern economy.

With Political Arithmetic, Nobel Prize–winning economist Robert Fogel and his collaborators tell the story of economist Simon Kuznets, the founding of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the creation of the concept of GNP, which for the first time enabled us to measure the performance of entire economies. The book weaves together the many strands of political and economic thought and historical pressures that together created the demand for more detailed economic thinking—Progressive-era hopes for activist government, the production demands of World War I, Herbert Hoover’s interest in business cycles as President Harding’s commerce secretary, and the catastrophic economic failures of the Great Depression—and shows how, through trial and error, measurement and analysis, economists such as Kuznets rose to the occasion and in the process built a discipline whose knowledge could be put to practical use in everyday decision-making.

The product of a lifetime of studying the workings of economies and skillfully employing the tools of economics, Political Arithmetic is simultaneously a history of a key period of economic thought and a testament to the power of applied ideas.

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Political Standards
Corporate Interest, Ideology, and Leadership in the Shaping of Accounting Rules for the Market Economy
Karthik Ramanna
University of Chicago Press, 2015
Prudent, verifiable, and timely corporate accounting is a bedrock of our modern capitalist system. In recent years, however, the rules that govern corporate accounting have been subtly changed in ways that compromise these core principles, to the detriment of the economy at large. These changes have been driven by the private agendas of certain corporate special interests, aided selectively—and sometimes unwittingly—by arguments from business academia
           
With Political Standards, Karthik Ramanna develops the notion of “thin political markets” to describe a key problem facing technical rule-making in corporate accounting and beyond. When standard-setting boards attempt to regulate the accounting practices of corporations, they must draw on a small pool of qualified experts—but those experts almost always have strong commercial interests in the outcome. Meanwhile, standard setting rarely enjoys much attention from the general public. This absence of accountability, Ramanna argues, allows corporate managers to game the system. In the profit-maximization framework of modern capitalism, the only practicable solution is to reframe managerial norms when participating in thin political markets. Political Standards will be an essential resource for understanding how the rules of the game are set, whom they inevitably favor, and how the process can be changed for a better capitalism.
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Principles of International Auditing and Assurance
4th Edition
Rick Hayes
Amsterdam University Press, 2021
The first textbook based upon International Standards on Auditing (ISAs), this fully revised and updated fourth edition presents a structured approach to auditing principles using ISAs as its basis. The International Standards on Auditing are now widely regarded as the global benchmark for auditing standards and as such an important audit quality indicator. This book describes the developments and practical use of all ISAs, as well as significant national standards in different countries. The new edition has been updated in line with International Standards and presents a truly International perspective. The book provides students with a real-world perspective as close to current auditing practice and thinking as possible.
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Prudential Supervision
What Works and What Doesn't
Edited by Frederic S. Mishkin
University of Chicago Press, 2001
Since banking systems play a crucial role in maintaining the overall health of the economy, the adverse effects of poorly supervised systems may be quite severe. Without some form of vigilant external oversight, banking systems could fall prey to excessive risk taking, moral hazard, and corruption. Prudential supervision provides that oversight, using government regulation and monitoring to ensure the soundness of the banking system and, by extension, the economy at large.

The contributors to this thoughtful volume examine the current state of prudential supervision, focusing on fundamental issues and key pragmatic concerns. Why is prudential supervision so important? What kinds of excess must it guard against? What particular forms does it take? Which of these are the most effective deterrents against mismanagement and system overload in today's rapidly shifting financial climate? The contributors foresee a continued movement beyond simple regulatory rules in banking and toward a more active evaluation and supervision of a bank's risk management practices.
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Studies in the Formation of the Nation-state in Latin America
Edited by James Dunkerley
University of London Press, 2002

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The Total Incomes System of Accounts
Robert Eisner
University of Chicago Press, 1989
Conventional measures of national income and product and its components have proved enormously useful as indexes of economic activity and as the empirical foundations of much of macroeconomic analysis. Robert Eisner's The Total Incomes System of Accounts (TISA) brings critical new dimensions to those measures. It offers systematic extensions and expansions in an effort to count all of the output that goes into economic well-being, now and in the future.

Eisner counts nonmarket as well as market production, including vast amounts of services produced by housewives and others in the home, capital formation by government and households as well as business, human and intangible capital invested in education, R&D, and health care, as well as tangible capital. He offers measures of net revaluations of tangible assets, redefines the critical boundaries between final and intermediate outputs, and presents separate sector accounts for business, nonprofit institutions, government, government enterprises and households, which make clear the major contributions of nonbusiness sectors to our total national income.

For these and other extensions, Eisner's TISA offers detailed and comprehensive income and product accounts in current dollars and product accounts in constant dollars for all of the years from 1946 to 1981, along with measures of capital stocks. Estimates of consumption, investment, and production functions with the new data sets, a review of other sets of extended accounts, and a detailed description of sources and methods are also provided.
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The U.S. National Income and Product Accounts
Selected Topics
Murray F. Foss
University of Chicago Press, 1983
The main topics treated in this conference volume are problems of deflation and quality change, the adequacy of the data used to construct the U.S. national accounts, and the broad theoretical evolution of the U.S. national income and product accounts. As these topics suggest, this volume represents a new stage in the study of national income and product accounts in that emphasis is placed on the information content of the system rather than on the structure of the accounts. This new emphasis is highlighted by the inclusion of a discussion among prominent users of the national accounts—Lawrence Klein, Otto Eckstein, Alan Greenspan, and Arthur Okun—that indicates the difficulties that confront those who utilize this information.
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Wannabe U
Inside the Corporate University
Gaye Tuchman
University of Chicago Press, 2009

Based on years of observation at a large state university, Wannabe U tracks the dispiriting consequences of trading in traditional educational values for loyalty to the market. Aping their boardroom idols, the new corporate administrators at such universities wander from job to job and reductively view the students there as future workers in need of training. Obsessed with measurable successes, they stress auditing and accountability, which leads to policies of surveillance and control dubiously cloaked in the guise of scientific administration. In this eye-opening exposé of the modern university, Tuchman paints a candid portrait of the corporatization of higher education and its impact on students and faculty. 

Like the best campus novelists, Tuchman entertains with her acidly witty observations of backstage power dynamics and faculty politics, but ultimately Wannabe U is a hard-hitting account of how higher education’s misguided pursuit of success fails us all.

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